COLLECTING | 1964 CORVAIR MONZA; Three Decades On, Reunited With a High School Sweetheart

By BILL WELLMAN

Published: January 10, 2010

THIRTY-TWO years is a long time to neglect a relationship. Just ask Craig Pursley.

The Chevrolet Corvair he drives on summer days here -- a red '64 Monza convertible -- was bought by his late father in 1966. Three years later, having turned 15 and acquired his learner's permit, he was tooling around Lexington, Neb., his nervous mother regularly stomping an imaginary brake pedal on the passenger-side floor as a sign that he should slow down.

At 16, the youngster who greeted the car's arrival so enthusiastically -- never mind that Ralph Nader's allegations of unsafe handling were still making headlines -- had his license and the Corvair was his daily transportation.

Though the Corvair was not in Mr. Pursley's possession for most of the years since his high school escapades, it remains the focal point of many memories -- including a brush with the law.

''We put the top down and my friends and I got a cooler full of snowballs and drove around town throwing snowballs at other cars and people,'' Mr. Pursley said. ''That was the first time I got stopped by the police, in that car.

''And the first time I told a girl that I loved her was in that car and the first time I heard it from a girl was sitting in that car, and just lots and lots of great memories,'' he said.

When he left for college, it was in a Chevy Monte Carlo; the Corvair stayed behind. On a trip home during his freshman year, the Corvair was nowhere to be seen.

''I asked Dad, 'Is work being done on it or something?' He said, 'No, I sold it.' It just floored me.

''What, you sold the Corvair?''

Mr. Pursley's father said he had put an ad in the paper and nobody called on it for three weeks, so he ''had to sell it to the junkman for $125.''

''That was just murder,'' Mr. Pursley said. ''It ran great, looked great. Started in the winter. Just a great car.''

Four or five years went by and Mr. Pursley decided he really wanted the Corvair back. His trip to the junkyard turned up more than half a dozen Corvairs -- but not that very special '64 Monza convertible.

A move to Southern California for work diverted him from the search, but by 2004 Mr. Pursley, a landscape and portrait painter, had moved to New Hampshire and was about to open an art gallery. The red Corvair took hold of him again.

''I thought, I've missed that car long enough,'' he said. ''I'm going to get another one, preferably a red and white one, preferably a convertible. And I want a '64.''

So he started looking, scouring the Internet using Google's image search. On the second page of the search results were photos of a red and white Monza with a dent in the door panel.

''At first I thought, well, somebody got hit right where I did,'' Mr. Pursley said.

Then he noticed two rectangular mirrors mounted on the front fenders, instead of the usual small round mirrors on the doors.

''When I saw that I thought, whoa, wait a minute. Dent in the door and rectangular mirrors? I ran up to the attic and found these old pictures and I thought, 'My gosh, this is my car!' The hairs on my arms and neck stood up.''

Problem was, the pictures on the Internet were from a sale that had taken place a year and a half or so earlier. Undeterred, he tracked down the owner in Johnstown, Neb. She agreed to sell it to him for what she had paid, $550, and he had the car shipped to New England.

''It had been 32 years since I had last seen it, and this sounds hokey, but in that 32-year span I had at least three dreams about that car,'' Mr. Pursley, now 55, said. ''One of them was, it was still mine, but I had it in this kind of Quonset hut. And I can remember in this dream going out to see it and it was dusty and needed a bunch of work. I can remember there was a hole in the convertible top behind the rear window.

''And in this dream I thought, well at least I've still got it and I'll be able to fix it when I can afford it. Then I woke up.''

Even after finding the car, Mr. Pursley remained curious about the years between his father's selling it to the junkman and the most recent owner's purchase.

As it turned out, the Corvair had been busy over the years, making something of a scenic loop in Nebraska. After leaving Lexington, the car had found homes in North Platte, Maywood, Bladen and Johnstown, in that order.

Mr. Pursley traced the history back owner by owner -- one, whose wife worked in the local courthouse, had provided a list. The earliest owner, Mr. Pursley said, ''was in North Platte, Neb., and when I finally got him, I said, 'Where did you get that car?' He said he bought it from the junkman in Lexington, Neb. That completed the circle.''

When the car arrived in New England it was a mess. The Corvair had apparently spent about 20 years parked indoors but more recently it had been put out to pasture -- literally. Home sweet home for rodents; heaven knows what the grazing cows thought.

Mr. Pursley tore out what was left of the seats and old carpet. As he sorted through the junk, the car of memories also turned out to be a time capsule of memorabilia.

He found his father's keychain with a 1923 silver dollar and a spare key to the house, which was wedged behind the speedometer; a guitar pick from Rod's Music, a store in Lexington; flaps from his old golf shoes; a golf tee (none of the other owners or their families played golf, he discovered); two pencils stamped Lexington State Bank, where his mother had worked; pens from companies his father had done business with; a piece of a comb that may have been his brother's; and a 1948 penny that may have been his.

Mr. Pursley said the grille on the dashboard above the radio speaker was a great place to hold pennies -- a dime would fall through and a nickel wouldn't fit.

''Whenever I had pennies I would put them in those slots and when it filled up I took my girlfriend out for an ice cream cone,'' he said. Given that a cone cost about 25 cents around that time, a full grille of 112 pennies might well have put him into milk shake, if not banana split, territory. What girl would not be wowed by the Corvair magic?

Before buying the car, he had checked with a local garage to see what the restoration might cost. The worst-case estimate was $4,000 to $7,000.

Those figures proved optimistic.

''I quit counting at $18,000,'' he said. ''It was close to the end by then, but had he told me it's going to be $18,000 I wouldn't have done it.''

Still, there are no regrets.

''Almost every time I take it out I have flashbacks of Dad teaching me to drive in that car, and golfing, and having Mom in the next seat pushing the imaginary brake when she thought I wasn't paying attention, and all that kind of stuff.

''Tons of memories,'' he said. ''Tons of memories.''

PHOTOS: REVIVAL: Stripped bare for repainting, right, the Corvair is now a showpiece.(PHOTOGRAPH BY GEORGE WALDMAN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES; PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF CRAIG PURSLEY); MEET THE MONZA: Craig Pursley reaching for the door handle of his Corvair Monza, at left in 1966 with his father and brother, and in 2004 when he bought the car back to restore.(PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY OF CRAIG PURSLEY)